Against all odds, 18-year-old Henry Gendreau reached his goal of studying animation at a Quebec college.

Diagnosed with autism, Henry was non-verbal until around the age of five, but that never stopped him from pursuing his dreams.

“I was excited when I was going for a second semester,” said the Gatineau, Que., teen.

As part of a military family that moved often, for once he also revelled at the idea of making long-term friendships.

But those dreams were crushed after Quebec’s Education Ministry denied his request for a French-language exemption from his high school, resulting in his removal from his post-secondary studies after one semester.

[…]

Quebec’s Charter of the French language grants children with serious learning issues a waiver allowing them to be educated in English. But the province’s Education Ministry denied that request.

[…]

Marie-Eve Lefebvre is a professor at the Université du Québec à Rimouski and specializes in higher education. Her research focuses on autistic students who want to pursue their post-secondary studies.

She says the burden to prove you can’t learn French is too high and autistic people she works with are discouraged from even applying for an exemption.

[…]

Christopher Craig, vice-president of the Quebec English School Boards Association, says rejections to exemption requests are frequent and impactful for students.

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So in order to be exempted from the French requirements, you have to “prove” your inability to learn French, which sounds exceedingly difficult to prove, and they will more than likely reject your exemption, and on top of all of that, it is mentioned in the article that THERE IS NO APPEAL PROCESS once your exemption application has been denied!

The application process for this exemption also requires performing a significant amount of self-advocacy (unless you have the kind of support system that only money can buy) and self-advocacy can be exceedingly difficult in my experience as an autistic person.

Essentially, once they reach post-secondary, autistic students in Québec are set up to fail if their autism impacts their ability to learn in French or earn their high school French credits.